


Asit tal-eb

by FoxNonny



Series: gra - dilseacht - cairdeas [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD, also hey wow wasn't In Hushed Whispers sort of an emotionally devastating fuckery of a quest, bull's phobia does not reflect my views but damn I have a lot of feelings about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 03:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14347257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxNonny/pseuds/FoxNonny
Summary: A dream of what might have been makes for a sleepless night.





	Asit tal-eb

**Author's Note:**

> This is... kind of a weird one. Maybe because I've got finals and an opera this week and I'm exhausted beyond the pale. But I couldn't get the idea out of my mind.

Sharing a bed with any soldier in a war risks a sleepless night; Bull has known this for as long as he's been sharing beds.

Between the heightened survival instinct causing twitches and roustings at the slightest sounds and the nightmares, sleeping through the night becomes a dangerous luxury. It's hard to let yourself drift once your mind figures out that the very concept of safety is a faraway and long-forgotten dream. 

Bull, after years of practice, tends to be quiet when he shifts and wakes, either from an external sound or internal hauntings. It's a matter of survival, too; in Seheron, more than a few soldiers lost their life in the night thanks to a violent dream. Sometimes, the death blow came from a fellow fighter, not eager for their companions' screams to bring the jungle down on them.

Mahanon and Dorian haven't learned these skills yet - at least, not to the level of expertise that Bull has. It's caused Bull some minor anxiety, the way Dorian gasps awake when the days' battles follow him to bed. Mahanon's not much better; he mutters, mostly in his own Dalish tongue. 

He's heard both Dorian and Mahanon shout and scream from night terrors before. Dorian, only the once, not long after his father came to try to collect him. Mahanon, more, and with increasing frequency as the months wear on. He's extrapolated that these terrors come almost nightly when Mahanon sleeps alone, if the look on his face the morning after is anything to go by, though the Inquisitor has yet to admit it. 

Tonight is a muttering night, but going by the choking gasps between the mutters, it's a bad one. Maybe just on the edge of turning to something worse. Louder.

Bull looks past Mahanon to Dorian, sprawled and still sound asleep on the other side of the bed. They've each woken one another up before from dreams like this; usually a quick shake, a silent look to assess how the other is doing, and a quiet retreat back to sleep, maybe cuddled up a little closer than before. He was genuinely surprised the first time Mahanon shook him awake from one of his bad nights - still has no idea what gave him away, and had to fight the urge to demand to know what it was so he could  _fix_  it, make it so it never happened again. It's still fucking hard not to panic when his guard slips - but luckily or unluckily, it's equally fucking hard to fight for that guard when Mahanon touches his face with a kind of gentleness that Bull honestly has no idea what to do with, looks at him with those big damn eyes, like-

He hasn't said it yet, and Bull knows he's waiting to see if it's reciprocated, but Mahanon can't hide his mind worth shit. And while Bull is struggling to figure out what it means to return it, it's terrifyingly comforting to be loved so much, and so deeply. 

Bull's split down the middle on this whole love thing, and he's constantly amazed by how many contradictions he's got bashing against each other in his own damn head. On one hand, he sees the way Mahanon looks at him, and the way Mahanon looks at Dorian, and part of him pretends not to understand how someone could love  _that way_ ,  _that much_ , twice over.

Another part of him knows that whatever he feels for Mahanon - and pretending he doesn't know is its own contradiction - is equal in strength to what he feels for Dorian, so it's not really that he doesn't understand. Maybe it's the honesty of it, the nakedness, that's hard to wrap his head around. 

Mahanon tosses, still caught in his dream, and Bull notices beads of sweat gathering along his furrowed brow.

Bull moves carefully, maneuvering himself so he's on his side (an impressive fucking accomplishment with the horns and everything), and puts a hand on Mahanon's shoulder. Dorian shifts on Mahanon's other side, barely rousing as Mahanon chokes through another line of Elvhen, a somewhat pleading tone in his voice. Bull grips Mahanon's shoulder tight and gives it a firm shake. 

Mahanon's eyes snap open, his wide-eyed stare immediately finding Bull, and for a moment Bull relaxes. 

Then Mahanon lets loose a strangled yell, scrambling back from Bull directly into Dorian, which would almost be funny if he doesn't also fling out a hand, a spark quickly forking into a full bolt of lightning in his palm.

Bull, despite his considerable size even by qunari standards, has quicker reflexes than most of his enemies give him credit for - the dead ones especially. It's thanks to this that he's able to roll off the bed and out of the way before the bolt lets loose, striking the stone wall above his head with a horrifically loud crash of sound.

He hears Dorian curse and the sounds of a scuffle, and chances a quick look to see what the situation is. Dorian has Mahanon wrestled into a firm hold with his arms crossed over his chest, his sparking hands restrained. The flashes of lightning cast the two of them in strange, glimpsing relief, but even in the unsteady light the anguish on Mahanon's face is clear.

"Maha-  _festis bei,_  stop-!"

" _It's not him!_ " Mahanon cries, still struggling to wrench himself out of Dorian's arms, and for once Bull is fucking glad the Inquisitor's physical strength is far from his greatest asset. "It's not  _him,_  it's- it's a demon, or-"

"Listen to me, you just had a-  _please stop trying to kill Bull for a moment and listen-_  it was a bad dream, or something-"

" _You saw him die!_ " Mahanon shouts, and there's conviction there that goes far beyond the ravings of a dream. "You  _saw_  it, you saw what they did, he- I couldn't-"

Mahanon's voice breaks into a sob, and he slumps in Dorian's arms, the violent flashes of light flickering out into crawling sparks over his skin. 

There's a cold, crawling dread that works its way through Bull's heart and skin, hearing how  _certain_  Mahanon is, and he doesn't want to give too much fuel to the thought, but- maybe he should have done something sooner, when he started to notice... maybe he misjudged, thinking that he'd cross this particular bridge when he came to it, underestimated how bad it could get-

But Mahanon seems convinced that Dorian knows what he's raving about, so Bull's eye quickly flicks to Dorian's face. It takes Bull's sight a moment to adjust, but he doesn't miss the sudden shift in Dorian's expression, from exasperated panic to- thank fuck, some level of understanding. Grief, even. Bull can breathe again.

"That- that was another time,  _amatus_ ," Dorian says gently, and with this Bull starts to put the pieces together. "We came back, remember? We fixed it. That's a life and a world within which we do not have to live."

"I... but I remember-"

"I know." Dorian breathes, the sound far from steady. "So do I. But I promise things are different. They're all-" Dorian grimaces, looking a bit stuck for a moment, then says, "-er,  _mostly_  all alive. Hold on."

Dorian lifts a hand, and several nearby oil lamps spring to life. 

It brings some much-needed light to the scene, and Bull watches warily as Mahanon looks around, his face twisting in utter confusion as he takes in the surroundings. Bull tamps down on that sick feeling watching Mahanon try to process what he's seeing and slowly gets to his feet.  _It's a magic thing, not- it's just a magic thing._

"It doesn't feel real," Mahanon says, his voice tight. "It- it feels like a dream, like some trick of the Fade, it- this doesn't feel right-"

"And this is why time travel is fascinating in theory, and  _utterly moronic_ in practice," Dorian sighs. "I suspect we've come upon the, er, anniversary of our little traipse into the future. Your mind is trying to reconcile two realities simultaneously and might have decided the other one presented a more convincing argument. Try to remember what you did yesterday, do you recall?"

"I-" Mahanon frowns. "We'd just returned to Redcliffe... but it feels so long ago."

"That was a year ago," Bull says carefully, and Mahanon flinches at his voice. He takes a seat on the edge of the bed, thinking. "Do me a favour; take a look at your right hand, pinkie finger. Uh, the little one on the end."

Mahanon glances down, lifting the hand in question. The finger is wrapped up tight and splinted against his ring finger. 

"You broke it during training yesterday morning," Bull says. "Well, Krem broke it, but only because you're still getting used to close-quarters combat. He still owes you a drink for that by the way. Healer says it'll be back to normal by the end of the week if you keep going to her for regular treatments."

"I don't..." Mahanon blinks. "Wait. I do remember that." His mouth quirks into something of a smile. "Krem cheated."

"It's not cheating if you win," Bull says.

Mahanon meets his eye for the first time, and while there's still uncertainty there, there's relief, too. Mahanon quickly drops his gaze and clears his throat, but not before Bull sees the tears gathering. "Um- fuck, I'm really sorry, I- it still all feels sostrange-"

"It might for a while yet," Dorian says. "I'm just assuming, there's really no case study for this sort of thing. But given that this is the first slip you've experienced since we returned, I think that's a good sign. It makes sense that things might feel a bit too close for comfort, now that we've sort of gone back to the future, so to speak."

Bull hesitates for a moment - just a moment, but he gets the sinking feeling that pause is gonna eat at him well into the night once this is all sorted - and offers a hand to Mahanon. Mahanon immediately reaches out to take it, gripping Bull's remaining fingers tightly. Bull grits his teeth and forces himself to focus on the problem at hand. "Maybe not the most sensitive time, but... can I ask how I bit it? I kind of figured I didn't make it, but I didn't know you two were there."

Mahanon's face twists, and Dorian sighs. "I mean, I didn't really know any of you terribly well at the time, so it was slightly less traumatic for me, but even so."

"You and Varric, you were both... infected. Red lyrium." Mahanon swallows, his thumb worrying over one of Bull's knuckles. "Corypheus's army was coming, you- you volunteered to hold them off to give us time so Dorian could open the portal back to-" he pauses. "We did. I remember, we did come back."

"After you nearly gave me a damn heart attack by trying to run directly into the oncoming demon army, yes, we did," Dorian says wearily.

"Not really big on the red lyrium poisoning, but facing down a demon army in a super heroic and badass way doesn't sound too bad," Bull says. He doesn't add that that's half how he expects things to fall out by the end of all this anyway, but judging by the sharp look Dorian gives him, his tone is pretty damn transparent. "I might take that over a lightning bolt to the face at three in the morning."

Dorian makes un utterly exasperated noise, but Mahanon offers Bull a watery smile. "Just testing your reflexes."

"Sure."

Mahanon gives Bulls hand a squeeze and bites his lip. "I- I really am very sorry for all this. I'm happy taking the settee for the night, if this- if whatever this is comes over me again-"

Bull doesn't say anything, just reaches over and scoops Mahanon up into his arms. Mahanon stops talking for a moment, letting Bull tuck him in close against his chest, then says, "I'm sure it goes without saying, but I'm very glad you're here."

"I'm sure it goes without saying, but I'm pretty fucking glad to be here too," Bull says. Mahanon turns his face, his breath warm against Bull's collarbone. "We've got you. Go back to sleep. We'll keep the lamps going for a bit, if it helps."

"You don't have to-"

"Does it help?" Bull's firm in his tone, and he feels how Mahanon responds to it, going nearly limp as he gives himself over to it. Relieved to have someone else take control. He nods very slightly against Bull's chest. "Then that's what we'll do. Go to sleep,  _kadan_."  

Mahanon sighs, and he's still clearly troubled, but the panic that overtook him earlier seems to have exhausted him. Bull holds him in silence, waiting for Mahanon's breathing to shift into something deeper and steadier, before he lets himself look at Dorian. 

Dorian is watching him closely, those grey eyes far too knowing as they search Bull's face. Bull has to calculate it all for a moment, weigh his options, before allowing his worries and fears to alter his expression. Before he lets Dorian see his deep unease.

It's not escaped either of them, the toll being Inquisitor has taken on Mahanon. He's quieter, thinner, sadder than the elf Bull met over a year ago. They haven't talked about it, but Bull knows Dorian sees it too. There's a breaking point coming. It wasn't tonight, but it isn't far off. 

Madness. It's been the creeping danger in all the shadowy corners of Bull's life. The Qun promised that those who denied its teachings would fall prey to it. Madness was as sure a killer as any weapon or disease in Seheron - every day there felt like a slow march to an inevitable doom. Bull was almost relieved when his own mind caved, finally, facing the terror of it head-on and knowing that his people would fix him. He never understood the ones who ran, who fought, who begged not to have to face the re-educators. It's been the most bitter aspect of the double-edged sword that has been his expulsion from the Qun, relying on his Chargers, on Dorian, on  _Mahanon_  to keep him in check. To watch for signs, little signs, that his mind might be going astray.

_Asala-taar._  The soul sickness. The reason why sharing beds with soldiers, with those who've seen war, is so damn fraught. There's varying degrees, from small panics and idiosyncrasies to middling panics to madness, full madness.

Mahanon is not a soldier, and there's just no time - no time to train him into one, no time to build and re-build his mind to stand against the damage that war can do, no time to pull him aside and heal the hurt that has already been done. 

Bull has a good estimation of his own strengths and weaknesses, confidences and fears. He thought his greatest fear was waking up one day and not knowing himself or his place in the world. 

But thinking of the way Mahanon looks at him now, reassures him,  _loves_  him, and imagining a day where Mahanon might look at him and neither know him, nor Dorian, nor himself... it could have been tonight. It could have very easily been tonight.

Dorian puts a hand on Bull's arm. Bull, moving slowly so as not to disturb the elf now sleeping lightly in his arms, puts his own scarred hand over Dorian's.

The lamps stay lit long after Mahanon has slipped back into sleep, and neither Bull nor Dorian find their own rest for quite a while.

**Author's Note:**

> I should have notes here but ya know what I think I'm just gonna let the work speak for itself for once. I Have A Lot Of Feelings About These Boys. Thank you for reading and please feel free to comment your own feelings below because they Sustain Me.


End file.
